How to paint Sakura / Cherry Blossom Flowers

Hey guys, this is Neel. Welcome back to my channel. Today I will be doing a tutorial on sakura or cherry blossom flowers. This is going to be a long one so I decided to separate the paint through in another video so I don't have to speed it up. Anyway, let's begin with the sketches. The main concern for these types of flowers is that you have to get the overall circular shape and for the petals to fit within that shape whilst keeping the center of the flower. And once you get the flat shape of the flower, I'd suggest trying different angles. So what a circle will look like in an angle is basically an oval and the flatter the angle, the more narrow the oval will be. And once you draw this out, find the center and try to place the petals. You can repeat this several times and create an exercise for yourself where you just keep drawing ovals in different directions and trying to fit the petals into it. The petals are shaped almost like a teardrop shape with the center being more pointy than the outer part. This shape will be skewed or distorted depending on the angle. That is why it really helps if you establish the center before you draw out the petals. Now let's try drawing a more detailed approach to this where the flowers might fold around the edges. This is how I would go about visualizing the shapes and you may find that this is similar to how I approach my poppy flower tutorials and that is to draw a bowl. Because this flower isn't as layered as the poppies though, we're going to draw a flatter bowl compared to what we used for the poppy tutorial. Now we are going to apply the exercise that we previously did which is to draw this basic shape in different angles and directions and finding the center and then placing the petals inside of that bowl shape. But this time because we want the flowers to have folds or maybe even if the flower isn't in full bloom, we're going to take that rounded edge of the bowl shape and draw out the back of the petals. This bowl shape will help you visualize and separate the petals in a more three-dimensional way that makes the flowers look more natural and organic. Another way to help distinguish the direction of the petals is to draw out the pollen inside of the flowers. So if the strands are pointed in a certain direction, it will help your eyes to realize that it's not pointing straight at you. This is a bit more tricky than the previous exercise because we are adding another element, so you might want to practice a bit more and also try to practice rotating the flowers after drawing it straight up. But if you feel like you're not going to be comfortable applying this to the final painting, you can also stick with the shapes that we drew out before in the previous exercise without the folds and your painting will still look great. The buds are quite simple. It's basically just an oval shape. You can make it a bit more circular or more oval and add a line or two along the area to make it look like closed petals and that's basically it. For the branches, I tried to make the line short and sort of disconnected. You'll see when I paint later, but I tried to add more character in the branches by making the shape more crooked basically and this is the way that the flower grows. They can grow in clumps or sometimes individually spread out across the branch. Let's move on to the colors now. For the sakura, I'm going to use Quinn Opera Viridian and I'm also going to add a bit of white in this, but you can also just add a lot of water to lighten the color. And then for the center, I'm going to be using Crimson Lake. I'm going to show you how I mix my colors here because I can't really include too much of the color mixing in the paint with me, so hopefully this is clear enough. So depending on how light you want the flowers to be, you just keep adding water until you get the value that you want. Keep in mind that watercolor always dries a bit lighter. Now I'm going to try to paint the flowers with the colors that we already swatched. So I'm starting with a light value pink for the sakura and I get that you might not have the exact same colors as I do, so feel free to mix your own pink and adjust the hue as you like. Going back to the painting now, as you can see for the petals, I try to paint the round shapes on the outer petals and then I'm going to paint quite a fine point in the middle and I'm also trying to avoid the colors from blending into each other across the petals, so don't be scared of white spaces. They're the things that will keep your painting light and less bulky. When I'm painting the petals, I like to move the excess water towards the center of the flower because we are also adding some of the Crimson Lake in the center. Keeping the center fairly damp will help the Crimson Lake to move across, creating a nice blend, but even if the center is dry, you can also try to move the paint with a clean wet brush and I'm using the tip of my brush to paint fine strokes to represent some fine veins on the petals. For the pollen, you can paint some fine strokes with the thick consistency Crimson Lake and then layer on top with some yellow with white gouache. It's preferable that the base is bone dry. Mine isn't quite dry yet, so you will see that the lines are not as crisp when I try to paint it with the yellow and the white gouache. If you find that the center is a bit too light after adding the yellow, you can add on some of the Crimson Lake again and work with the painting according to your liking. Let's move on to the other elements now and these are the colors for the branch. For the branch, I mix some Sepia with Crimson Lake to create a nice reddish brown. To paint the branch, I try to use the tip of my brush and I paint small strokes and make sure that my strokes are a bit wobbly so it looks like the branch has more texture. Also try to add some small branches sticking outwards. This will add character to your painting. Moving on to the flower buds, I'm going to have two types. One is where the buds are close to blooming and the other one I want to also add some buds that just started to grow. For the first one, I'm going to use the exact same color as the flowers and for the stem connecting to the buds, I'm going to use just the Crimson Lake instead of the previous brown mixture that we made for the branch. To paint the buds, I'm going to paint some oval shapes and towards the top where the buds are going to connect with the stem, I'm going to do a little point and I'm doing small thin strokes to create the oval leaving some white and texture. Then while the bottom of the buds are still wet, I'm going to connect it with the Crimson Lake. For the smaller buds, I'm doing very small ovals branching out in little clumps using Crimson Lake. Once the base of the larger flower bud is dry, I'm going to add another layer for added texture with a thicker consistency pink. I'm also picking up some of the Crimson Lake from the stem and pulling it on the closed petals. We're going to go back a bit and do some painting exercises that you might want to repeat before painting your final composition. These exercises would really help if you're still unable to visualize the shapes in different angles and tilts. The exercise that I'm going to do is basically the same as the one that we've previously drawn out before in the beginning, but this time we're going to only be using the circles and the ovals as your guide and you're going to paint the flowers within those enclosed areas instead of drawing it out with pencil. If you're new to watercolors, start with just a circle. Then once you're comfortable with the front on angle, which is the easiest, then you can start using more tilted ovals as your guide. This might be a bit tricky, so remember to always find the center after it spreads a bit, also after it dries. So you can see the center of the flower that I've painted look a bit dull, so I'm going to go over the center again with some of the Crimson Lake. This is something that you can adjust as you paint. If you want to soften the transition between the pink and the Crimson Lake, you can clean your brush and dampen it, and then reactivate the Crimson Lake on the center whilst feathering the edges with your brush. You can make several ovals as we did in the beginning, and once you're comfortable with it, you can either use that angles that you've learned for the final painting, or we can take it up a notch and use the bowl as our grid, so we can add some folds of the flower in your painting. I'm just going to show you one example of this, but you can also repeat and get comfortable with it. Basically we're going to paint the petals until the outer lines of the bowl first, and then adding the Crimson Lake in the center of the flower as we did before. Then as we're pulling the Crimson Lake, I'm going to paint to the inside part of the bowl, leaving the back of the petal with the light base color, and this is how we are going to separate the front and the back of the flower petal. You can either use the Crimson Lake from the center, or you can add a thicker consistency of the pink of the Sakura flower, play around with it and see which one you like. Then for the rest of the petals, I'm going to do the exact same thing as all of the other angles, and that's to activate the center, which is the Crimson Lake, and using the tip of my brush, I'm painting thin lines so it looks like the veins, or maybe the frills and folds of the flowers. Moving along, we're going to do the same thing, but this time without the help of the circle, ovals, and the bowl shape to guide us. If you've noticed, these are just three levels of exercises to paint flowers, and this would apply to a lot of other flowers too, so take the level as you need to practice. This way, hopefully, if you have any flowers that you want to paint which has similar structure to the Sakura flowers, you may also apply it with these techniques. Even by changing the colors, you might be able to introduce more flowers into your flower bouquet painting. So, I think by now you get the overall idea of how I would go about painting flowers. I will get back to you after I've painted these angles so we can talk a bit more about the flowers, and this time I'm going to add some of the center pollen of the flowers. I'm going to use thick consistency crimson lake, and the thickness is somewhat close to almost a dry brush because we want to create crisp dark lines at the center of the flower. This would also mean that the painting underneath is bone dry before we start adding the lines. Make sure that the lines you are painting is following the angle of the flowers. If your flower is pointing up, make sure that the lines are also pointing up. I am then adding some dots on top of the lines that we created. Now, as you can see, the flowers already have more interest because of the center, but personally, I find that it looks a bit dark, so I want to lighten it up a bit by adding some yellow dots on top of the dark center with any yellow color, but I'm using lemon yellow mixed with white gouache. The white gouache is important because you need the opaque color to go against the dark crimson lake. For the branch, I'm going to show you a close-up of what I do with my brush, and as you can see, I'm not dragging my brush, but I'm making small strokes to create the texture that I mentioned before. This would help you avoid painting smooth straight lines for the branch and instead creating a bit more jagged lines. As we get to the edge of the branch, I'm also painting with lighter hands to create finer lines. If your brush control isn't that great yet, you can actually take advantage of it and have your hands a bit shaky so the lines doesn't look too smooth. I'm going to also bunch up some of the stems and create smaller buds using just the crimson lake. Moving along to the larger flower buds, as you can see, I'm only using the brush tips instead of applying too much pressure to my brush, and I've left some white lines here and there, but I'm just going to leave it there instead of filling the whole shape. This way, you add a bit of texture and folds behind the petals, and once you are done with the flower buds, you can add the stem with the crimson lake. If you're more comfortable with painting the stem first before the flower buds, that's also doable as you can see me doing here. And that's basically it. Hopefully with these exercises, you are able to apply it to your very own composition. I'm going to be posting another video on this next week for the final paint through of these flowers, so if you're interested, be sure to check it out. Thank you for watching till the end, and I'll see you at the next one. Bye!